Mark Space Announces the Visualization 2 Stage of Their Residential Development

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Remember Mark Space? I wrote in the past about how underwhelmed I was by their nascent virtual world platform, with its 360-degree photos of rooms where you rearranged 2-dimensional pictures of furniture. Not terribly impressive, and I’m not the only person who thought so, either.

Well, here’s the latest Mark Space promotional video:

The Russian company behind Mark Space has proudly announced an incremental upgrade to their platform, called Visualization 2. The big news is that you can now insert, rotate, and tint 3-dimensional objects such as furniture. In fact, what you build is now an awkward mix of 2D and 3D content, as can be seen in the following six-minute video that walks you through the whole process of decorating the 64-square-metre blank box you purchased for your residence using the MRK cryptocurrency:

You purchase the virtual land for your home using a marketplace called the UNITEX, which could badly use some well-written help pages to allow you to decipher the listings:

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The cheapest price for a 64 m² plot of land is 1,000 MRK (which works out to about US$6.00 at current exchange rates). So land is still relatively cheap, at least.

Mark Space plans to launch in March of 2019. If you’re interested, you can follow the project’s development via their Telegram, their BitcoinTalk forum, their Facebook page, plus LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Medium, YouTube, and of course, their website.

So, what do I think about all this now? I think that there are virtual worlds out there that are way, WAY ahead of Mark Space in development, and which do not rely on the blockchain or cryptocurrencies (which I still feel is a solution looking for a problem to solve). And what you can actually do on the platform (even if they did finally integrate 3-dimensional objects) is not really that impressive overall.

There’s some talk of user avatars and AI-controlled pets, but no mention of how they will work, or how you can customize them. The entire project is big on fancy graphics and lofty promises, but still very short on the technical implementation details. Take, for example, this image used to promote their new residential creation tool:

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There is absolutely no way you can actually build a house that looks like this, using the limited toolset Mark Space is going to make available in Visualization 2! You are restricted to 64-square-metre boxes, which you can connect with doors (if you own more than one connected box). Compared to what you can already achieve in any of the newer virtual world platforms—Sansar, High Fidelity. Sinespace, VRChat—this is laughable. Even 15-year-old Second Life has far better in-world prim-building tools than what Mark Space offers you.

Again, I will be watching safely from the sidelines as this project unfolds. I wish them luck; they are certainly going to need it to succeed in this severely depressed cryptocurrency market. The only blockchain-based virtual world that I would even have considered investing in before (Virtual Universe) has gone as silent as the tomb after suspending their token sale. The crypto market is hammering a lot of start-ups.

Mark my words: there will be casualties among the many blockchain-based virtual world platforms within the next two years. Caveat emptor! As crypto journalist Ian DeMartino has written:

VR is cool, Blockchains are interesting. That doesn’t mean investors should throw their money at anyone who says those industry buzzwords. The MARK.SPACE demo is really bad VR and the MARK.SPACE token is a really [bad] crypto.

Stay away at all costs, or at least until they come out with a product that actually has some potential.

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Nine Blogs You Must Follow!

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Back in June, I posted about 4 blogs and 4 Flickr groups you should follow for news and pictures of Second Life freebies. The four blogs I originally recommended were:

The first three I check daily; the fourth one I check about once a week, just to see what’s new. I often find some treasure that I have unaccountably overlooked in my travels across the grid! The third one is good because it is an aggregator; it gathers together blogposts from various blogs such as FabFree (but note that not all of the posts in SL Freebies Cheapies Dollarbies Lucky Chairs Hunts are about free items; there’s a mix of free items and deals).

Well, I have found another 5 blogs which are also worth checking out regularly if you are serious about hunting for steals, deals, and freebies in Second Life! Let’s look at them, one by one:

SL Freebie Addiction

SL Freebie Addiction is a blog written by Genna since 2011, entirely devoted to freebies. She very clearly indicates what items are and aren’t free in her detailed styling notes under each picture, and she also indicates whether items are group gifts or hunt gifts.

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0L$ Fashion in Second Life 2

This is a Japanese blogger who posts every day about the freebies she has found all over the grid. Right now she is putting up one post every day showing the advent gifts she was able to pick up on that day. All items pictured include a SLURL to help you find it in-world. Here’s a link to the blog.

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Midnight Magpie

Midnight Magpie is another blog which is really covering all the advent calendar goodies right now! Every picture includes full style notes with SLURLs to the stores.

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Pure Eggs & Spam

Faithless Babii is a relentless freebie hunter, often churning out two or even three blogposts a day! She covers freebies from all over the grid. Pure Eggs & Spam also covers sale events such as L$35 Saturdays. She seems to have a knack for finding things that other bloggers overlook.

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Dancing in the Square

But I saved the very best for last: this blogger, Cherie, is an absolute inspiration to all freebie fashionistas! Cherie pulls together impressive fashion displays, only using freebies and group gifts! She’s fearless, too; she’s not afraid to try a men’s jacket or a men’s pair of shoes on a female avatar if it fits the look she is trying to create. Browse through her blog and you’ll get all kinds of tips on where to find great group gifts and freebies, and how to put them together in true style!

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Here are just a few pictures from Dancing in the Square (I really like how she includes a bag of some sort in almost every outfit):

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So now you have nine blogs to follow. Spend a few minutes every day to visit them, and you’re certain to find out about the latest and greatest steals, deals, and freebies! Most of these blogs update daily, if not more often.

Oh, and don’t forget to join and follow these six SL groups for even more news about freebies and deals:

  1. Fabulously Free in SL: their group is free to join; here is a list of the gifts you can pick up with that group tag active
  2. Maitreya Gifts, Sales & News: their group is free to join; follow their blog to find out what gifts you can get with this group
  3. Mesh Avatar Appearance Maniacs (MAAM): it costs L$50 to join the MAAM group; here is a list of freebies you can pick up with that group tag active
  4. SL Frees & Offers: their group is free to join; here’s their blog
  5. TeleportHub.com: it costs L$10 to join their group; here is a list of gifts you can get
  6. THIRD LIFE [Frees, Gifts & Hunts]: L$10 to join group; here is their blog

Do you know of a great freebie fashion blog that I have missed? Please leave me a comment if you do, with the name of the blog and the URL, thank you!